How Not to Cover A Kidnaping

Covering kidnapings has always posed a special challenge to newsmen. They must weigh their responsibility to inform readers fascinated by the compelling drama of a kidnaping against the risk of further endangering the victim's life through premature exposure of ransom or rescue plans. "There's a problem of balance," says Minneapolis Tribune Managing Editor Wallace Allen, "between a person's life and the public's right to know."

Allen's observation is peculiarly ironic. In the recent spate of kidnapings --Patricia Hearst, Atlanta Constitution Editor Reg Murphy, Mrs. Eunice Kronholm of Minneapolis, eight-year-old John Calzadilla of Long Island--there has been one major exception to the generally sensible coverage of these stories: the Minneapolis television and press, including Allen's Tribune. Though the Trib was not alone in pursuing the Kronholm kidnap story with excessive zeal, its reportorial ingenuity and aggressiveness at times crowded its competitors --and its usual sense of discretion.

After Mrs. Kronholm's abductors got in touch with an FBI agent impersonating her husband, he began relaying coded messages over the police radio on how the $200,000 ransom demand should be delivered. Other agents received the messages, which kept referring on the air to "the package"; the messages were also overheard by anyone, including newsmen, who happened to be monitoring weather reports on a citizens' band frequency close to the police radio wave length. Though the FBI had hoped to keep its contacts with the kidnapers secret--it still did not know where Mrs. Kronholm was being held --the Trib revealed that efforts were being made to exchange a ransom for Mrs. Kronholm.

Too Warm. Meanwhile, Trib Reporter Harley Sorensen, 42, set out in his car on the third night after the kidnaping to try to locate the ransom "drop" point. Following instructions from his city desk via a short-wave receiver, Sorensen cruised through the drop area until he saw a car that he had been following stop by a phone booth on a lonely road. He presumed that it was the agent impersonating Mrs. Kronholm's husband, and he pulled his auto into a side road, hoping to witness what few reporters ever have: the drop-off and possible pickup of a kidnap ransom. By then, Sorensen's editors had radioed him to abandon the assignment, and a car with two suspicious-looking plainclothesmen was approaching him. Sorensen finally decided to pull out. "I was getting too damn warm," he acknowledged later.

In fact, the hot presence of newsmen in the ransom exchange area was hardly helpful to harassed officials. One reporter drove by the drop point within three minutes of the actual ransom delivery. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thor Anderson complained, only partly in jest: "The ransom money almost hit a TV sound truck when it was dropped." Next morning--still some seven hours before Mrs. Kronholm's release--the Trib's sister publication, the Minneapolis Star, printed a map showing the route taken in delivering the ransom. The FBI already had one suspect under surveillance but wanted to delay arresting him until the woman was safe and other suspects lined up. Publication of the map, showing just how closely the kidnapers' moves were being observed, forced the agents to move ahead of schedule. Said Anderson: "I would like to have been able to make the decision to arrest without having to put publicity into the formula."

Some newsmen replied that it was the FBI, not reporters, who had blundered about in easily identified cars and threatened to scare off the kidnapers by turning the ransom drop zone into an elephant walk. But Trib editors acknowledged their overzealousness. Reporter Sorensen and his city editor drew reprimands; Managing Editor Allen, who wrote a memo to his staff outlining policy for future kidnap coverage, later said: "We were in the position of making news rather than covering it."

In the Calzadilla case, by contrast, legwork was restrained, and an FBI spokesman praised New York City-area newsmen for clearly describing the magnitude of the successful rescue and arrest operation. Such coverage, he said, might deter potential kidnapers. In Atlanta, newsmen collaborated to protect one of their own, Reg Murphy, from premature reporting before the facts of his situation were fully known. Only the local CBS outlet, WAGA-TV, ignored the self-imposed discipline agreed to by other organizations. When WAGA later tried to cash in on its spurious scoop by praising itself in a series of newspaper ads, Murphy's outraged Constitution accused the station of indulging in a "megalomaniac overdose of self-acclaim."

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